Date: 18/07/2017

"Smart low cost portable diagnostic center for Rural India" wins Premier Farnell’s competition

The project idea named "Smart low cost Portable diagnostic center for Rural India" by Saleem Ulla Shariff, India has won the electronic component distributor Premier Farnell’s "Change the World" global design competition.

Project details: In remote villages in rural India there is a lack of medical facilities This project will use the Internet of Things (IoT) to build a low-cost portable diagnostic centre that could be deployed in every village, allowing better diagnosis of conditions and improving the healthcare available.

Sensors interfaced to a Raspberry Pi will be used to help with the diagnosis of patients. Signals from sensors such as ECG and heat beat sensors will be displayed and analysed using digital oscilloscope software. This information will assist doctors and medical staff to conduct basic tests on patients in rural areas, identifying who should be sent for a second opinion to a hospital in a nearby town or city.

An open source image processing tool will also be in use process image data, enabling the diagnosis of a range of diseases.

"Change the World" competition was launched by Premier Farnell which owns the online semiconductor and electronic component shopping portal element14.com in 2016. The participants are given $1000 of products from element14. The ten winning projects also included entries from all over the world.

The other interesting projects won include:
1. Intelligent helper of the blind and partially sighted: A multiprocessor system using a combination of signals from different sources that helps blind and visually impaired people to navigate in their daily lives.

2. Improving Education using Raspberry Pi and the Internet of Things: This project will improve the education system within remote villages of Kenya, using cloud services and Raspberry Pi boards configured in an internet of things network to transfer data to and from remote schools.

3. Andean Smart Farming: This project will support two of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals: Hunger Zero and Economic Growth, with a device that will provide knowledge to Andean Farmers on how to produce food in a sustainable way.

4. IoTBeezness: Bees are essential to pollinate many plants. This project will create a Precision Apiculture System and Service that will assist sustainable beekeeping. The service integrates a beekeeping management module and a beehive monitoring module. A network of sensors will gather data and a decision support module provides advice and warnings to the beekeeper, based upon internal and external environmental conditions.

5. Low Cost Digital Stethoscope: This project aims to transform a traditional stethoscope, which requires a trained medical practitioner, into a digital stethoscope which can be used at home.

To see rest of the winners and other details visit the website:
http://element14changetheworld.com/winners/